Yet another month flies by. As I sit here writing this, I can hardly believe that we’re almost to Christmas, and that so many firsts for Emily are flying by.

Rachel, your favorite phrase this month has been “See, you told me!” Evidently we’ve been telling you “I told you” too much. But that’s how you work. We tell you something, you don’t believe us, so you go check it out for yourself, and now you’re beating us to the punch on the “I told you so” line.

Your biggest wish for the year has finally come true – your grandparents have arrived! They got here on Sunday while you were taking a nap, and once you woke up, the smile didn’t leave your face the entire rest of the day.

You have been writing a drawing quite a bit at school, and everything is starting to become much more clear to us. At the beginning of the year, it was all just scribbles, and you’d tell us what the letters were that you wrote, or what the picture was that you had drawn. Now, you are writing letters and we can see which letters they are. You can even write your entire name, in order. And just the other night, you were making a drawing of a baby, and I could see where the head, eyes, and neck were on the baby.

Your are still being a great big sister, and help us take care of Emily, or get out of our way when we need to do something specifically with her. You’ve been very understanding, and you always say how much you love your little sister. You’ve also been asking to hold her more often, even though she is getting heavier and harder for you to hold.

Emily, you turned fourth months old a couple of weeks ago, which meant one thing: shots. Lots of shots. Four of them, to be exact, and evidently the nurse who gave you the shots went to the Torturing Babies School of Nursing because she gave you each shot excruciatingly slowly. Like she enjoyed hearing you scream as she plunged the needle into your leg. When your big sister was that age, I remember your mother telling me that the nurse was so fast she almost missed it. Well, that nurse made dang sure that I saw it all. You were a trooper, though, and only cried as long as she was digging around in your leg with a needle, then you stopped, and when we got into the car, you promptly fell asleep.

Your have been talking to us almost the entire month, and man, are you ever LOUD! If no one is in the room with you, and you want some attention, you won’t cry, you’ll just start talking and babbling to yourself as loud as you can. You’re making a lot of different sounds, which is really good, and next month we’ll probably try a hearing aide on you to see if it makes a difference in the sounds you hear and produce. But you’re doing really well, we think.

You are grabbing at everything now. You grab onto the little toys we have on your car seat and play with them, you grab onto the rings and other toys we have hanging from your play mat, you grab onto my thumbs while you’re drinking your bottle, and the other day, you grabbed onto your sister’s hair and wouldn’t let go!

You have also gained a lot of strength in your neck and abdomen, and you don’t get quite so cranky when we put you on your belly anymore. You are able to hold your head up on your own, and you can sit up on your own in your bumbo seat, and you love to sit up while you’re leaning against a pillow. In fact, you get kind of mad if we put you on your back, unless there are toys for you to play with.

Speaking of gaining, you gained a couple of more pounds since your last doctor’s visit. You’re now over 15 pounds and boy can my back ever tell! You’re getting so big that we are having to put away all of the 3 month clothes and start to get out the 6 month stuff.

It is amazing to watch both of your grow and learn so many new things. As always, we can’t wait to see what the next month will bring. We love you both very much.